


The Shifting Threads of Time's Tapestry

by erunamiryene



Category: Forgotten Realms
Genre: A very ehhhh approach to canon, Character Study, Chronomancers, F/F, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 21:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14317695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erunamiryene/pseuds/erunamiryene
Summary: The old journal of one Aythari Caermae, avariel chronomancer.Now with art!





	The Shifting Threads of Time's Tapestry

My name is Aythari Caermae, and it is my first day at Naathsera. 

I was born in 327 A’edell in Rysshara, a tiny, bucolic farming community near the edge of Mythnethaes, the largest island in our territory. The northern border of Rysshara, where my family have farmed for generations upon generations, is perpetually misty and damp, more wild than the neat rows of crops farther inland, covered by spray from the waterfalls that plummet over the edge of the island. 

Rysshara’s main crops are a number of herbs and flowers sent directly to Naathsera, Y’na Serine’s sprawling academy of magic. Y’na Serine, the Avarieli capital, is crystalline structures rising far into the sky above and sculpted to evoke the waves and fluidity of the Great Ocean far below, and is a sight unmatched on Mythnethaes … and Naathsera is its heart. 

It is here that Avariel from all across our sovereignty come to learn the arts of magic and sorcery. We all have some innate magic, of course, but not all will wield it to the extent that they’ll find themselves in one of the schools at Naathsera.

I clutch my belongings and watch my parents rise into the air, finally disappearing into Y’na Serine, and try very hard not to cry. 

\--

My name is Aythari Caermae, master of the arcane, and today I am no longer a student, but a scholar.

Invitations to Osmenera, the school of chronomancy, are rarer than hen’s teeth. It's small, located a good distance outside Y’na Serine proper, toward the southern end of Mythnethaes. Three of us from our graduating class were invited; I am the only one who accepted, accompanying Osmenera’s slender, quiet headmaster, Tierest Eleqen, away from the towering gates of Naathsera. 

We leave Y’na Serine behind us, but he keeps going past the bright white walls of Osmenera. The island falls away, and then we are in nothing but clear blue open sky, soaring through the air far above the Great Ocean. He touches down on a small, near-deserted island; Osmenera is but a speck in the distance, regarding me solemnly. 

“If you knew the future, Aythari, what would you do?”

I think for a moment. “I would do nothing, Headmaster Eleqen. To know and to act on it, is to change it. It is simply the knowing that interests me. To travel beyond the borders of Coliar, to see what came before and what comes after.” I pause, then nod firmly. “Yes. To know would be enough.”

He watches me, long enough that I start to fidget, and then smiles gently. “It will not. But I can hardly fault you for not knowing that now.”

\--

My name is Aythari Caermae, and I am smitten. 

I meet Kesyth in Osmenera's vast archive. We reach for the same book, my fingers brush hers, and she smiles. I can hardly look away from those green eyes, green as the fields back home. I smile back. 

"Shall we work on this together?" she says. "I have all my notes here with me, and two minds working on a problem is better than one."

We begin with shifting small threads - a few years ahead, a few years back - gradually expanding our reach, watching the history and future of our people unfold. Kesyth kisses me for the first time in the glow of the Wintersend lights of now, her fingertips gentle on the side of my face, and it's everything I could have dreamed of. 

“I think I love you,” I tell her, fifteen years later in the same spot. The colored lights speckle her ivory wings with a riot of color, and I don't know if her cheeks are flushed from the honeywine, from the warmth of the nearby fire, or from how she's looking at me. 

“Silly,” she says. “You could have told me without shifting the threads. You know the time doesn’t count if it passes that way.”

“Silly,” I echo. “No matter when we go, I will always love you, have always loved you.”

We watch the Avariel grow restless, wondering what is beyond the Feywild. We shift threads and we watch the heated debates on both sides, and our curiosity gets the better of us. Our bags are packed, resting on our bed. Tonight we shift the threads of time again, and we travel with the Avariel. We will see where our people go. 

\--

My name is Aythari, and I am bereft.

The avariel discover Toril. It is beautiful, though full of a multitude of sadly landbound creatures but for dragons. Assured that our people will continue on, we come back to our proper place in the timeline. It is a number of years for us before we come to see their progress. Engrossed in our studies, in our life, in our daughter and in each other, we are content to let our descendants forge their path. We do not peek through the tapestry of time. 

Perhaps we should have.

The dragons on Toril, incensed beyond reckoning at what they perceive as encroachment on their territory and driven by a murderous taste for Avariel flesh, hunt our people. We are slaughtered almost to extinction, driven to a squalid, miserable, landbound existence. War and death and misery at every turn. 

I tell Kesyth we can't intervene, that we are only to watch. 

I clutch at her arm, beg her not to leave our concealed location. 

I whisper that I love her, choked out in a voice thick with tears as she lays broken and bleeding in my arms, wings shredded, having distracted the dragon enough that the small enclave of remaining Avariel, led by a woman who looks like me with Kesyth's startling green eyes, can make their escape. 

The hell of being in time and out of it is that watching the light fade from Kesyth's eyes is always my present. The memories of our house are too much. Our daughter is already at Naathsera. I ask Tierest to look after her. He doesn't ask when I will return. 

He asks something else, instead. 

"If you knew the future, Aythari, what would you do?"

This time, I have no answer for him. 

\--

Names are too much of a reminder, so I go where I won't need one. 

Seas roil and heave. Landmasses rise from murky depths. Massive creatures leave marks across new earth, fighting titan battles while I watch, unseen, from the branches of gargantuan trees. Magic is loose and wild and raw here, imbued in everything. Here my anguish is drowned out amid this primal creation, a mere whisper although I yell until I'm hoarse, my cheeks wet with unending tears. 

And still I am not far enough away from Kesyth's memory. I talk to her as if she's here. I swear I can hear her voice in the magic that weaves around me. 

I must go farther.

\--

My name is ... 

It's ... 

In the twenty-fourth hour, at the end of all things, the Void envelopes me. 

\--

 _Aythari. Have you so lost yourself?_

Worse. I lost you. 

_You're stronger than this, a'mael._

But - 

_No. Get up. Go home. Don't wither and die like a tama flower at Wintersend._

\--

My name is Aythari Caermae, though not for much longer.

Chronomancers who travel to the twenty-fourth hour on the Great Clock are few and far between. Fewer still are the ones who return, fewer still than that the ones who return mostly unscathed.

The pull of the darkness is unmistakable. I feel it every day. But I will not succumb to it again. Today I shift the threads, bound for Toril. I do not know if I will come back this time. \-- 

My name is Raisi Stormsworn, though the deepest part of me will always be Aythari Caermae. 

I spend time carefully hidden in the branches of a gargantuan tree, and watch myself hold Kesyth as she dies, and I cry for us both. I watch human settlements sprout, grow, expand. I find the Avariel, a last conclave of them atop Mount Sundabar. I find myself receiving strange looks; it doesn’t occur to me until then how archaic I must sound to them. Avariel have passed from collective knowledge into myth, legend. 

I shift threads. 

Avariel are beginning to reach out to the landbound races, sending small delegations to the larger human cities. The Aerie of the Snow Eagles isolates us enough that we take to the skies once more, those hundreds of years spent in the dirt and the muck barely spoken of, if at all. 

I am 350 years old, by A’edell reckoning. Perhaps it is time to stop wandering, and find a place to live out the rest of my years. 

I shift the threads again. 


End file.
